Chess Boards

Chess Boards

I made two of these Chess or Checkers boards. They are made from Cherry, Walnut, Cedar and Pine.

The one with the Cherry wood squares is a lot nicer. As the grain of the Cherry has a sort of pearlescent shimmer.

The boards start out as eight pieces of wood strips. The strips are actually three pieces of laminated ~ ¾” strips. There is a trick to getting the Squares to line up square and that is done with the router. The Cherry squares are ¼” thick inserts that will not pop out like traditional inlays. The eight strips are held together with three ¼” threaded rods holding it together. They are framed in Walnut and finished with my custom stain. Strength and durability of structure all the hallmark of good design. What kind other kinds of foundations would we have in our lives?

I have found that a sound tenet of good design is also to use odds and ends pieces to see what you can come up with. It is counter to our culture of only buying new when we need something which puts little faith in what we have to work with already. This is a harder way to design things and all but impossible to do accept for the thoughtful man. If it is worth doing it is worth doing well and how else are we to do this accept for with what we have already. A good principal to follow. It kind of reminds me sometimes of that Spaghetti Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” The scene where the character Tuco goes into the gun shop and takes the chamber from one gun, the barrel from another and the handle from another, and it works better than each of the three would have before. For all his flaws and indeed crimes, this ability was not one of them.

God Bless,

Thomas Paul Murphy

Copyright 2010 Thomas Paul Murphy